About our Collection

The Wende Museum was founded in 2002 in an effort to stem the tide of wholesale neglect and rampant destruction of material culture following the fall of the Berlin Wall. It quickly grew into a museum and research institute at the forefront of its field and is recognized as an unparalleled resource for insight into the Eastern perspective of the Cold War.

The museum holds one of the most important collections of East German art and artifacts in the world, as well as collections from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the entire sphere touched by socialism during the Cold War, from Asia to the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The museum prioritizes collections that would otherwise be at risk of disappearance, destruction, or neglect, making these materials available to scholars and the general public via open access policies. This is essential to enabling future generations to encounter a vanishing culture, especially in a time when authoritarian regimes are determined to destroy and disappear these materials.

The Wende’s collection consists of more than 100,000 artifacts, artworks, volumes of books and pamphlets, manuscript collections, photographic images, and films. The Wende also holds large collections of maps, printed ephemera, posters, periodicals, and newspapers. Additionally, the Museum possesses eleven sections of the Berlin Wall, ten of which form the largest continuous section of the Wall outside of Germany.

In 2020, the Wende began a three-year project to digitize its most important archival collections, funded by Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. A subsequent Arcadia grant supports the digitization of Soviet Jewish archives. All digitized materials will be freely available through our Online Collections.